Giving your business manager access to your LinkedIn account can be a great way to leverage their expertise and allow them to manage your professional brand and presence. However, it also requires trusting them with sensitive business and personal information. Approaching this access correctly is important for maintaining control of your account while enabling your manager to do their job effectively. Here are some best practices to consider when granting your business manager access to your LinkedIn profile and account.
Why Give Access in the First Place?
There are several key reasons why giving access makes sense:
- Your manager may be able to optimize your profile better than you can. With their experience crafting professional brand messaging, they likely have a great understanding of keywords, formatting, and content presentation that will make you stand out.
- It allows your manager to keep your profile updated on your behalf. They can add new roles, projects, skills, and accomplishments as they happen so your profile is always current.
- Managers can monitor comments and messages coming through your LinkedIn account. By seeing notifications and conversations in real-time, they can flag anything important and respond if appropriate.
- Gives them visibility into your connections and network. They can provide advice on building your community and leveraging relationships.
- Allows them to directly coordinate messaging and outreach from your account. This can be especially helpful for sales professionals.
The expertise and time a manager can dedicate to your LinkedIn presence is extremely valuable. Providing access lets them apply their skills effectively on your behalf.
Creating a User Agreement
Before handing over the keys to your LinkedIn kingdom, it’s wise to create a simple user agreement that outlines the terms of access for your manager. This ensures you are both absolutely clear what they can and can’t do within your account. Key points to cover include:
- Specific profile elements they can edit and add to, like your summary, work history, education, skills, etc.
- Any sections that are off limits, like your interests, testimonials, recommendations, etc.
- Expected frequency and focus of their updates to your profile.
- Guidelines surrounding posting updates or articles as you.
- Rules around connecting with other members or responding to messages and comments.
- Terms for revoking access or making changes to agreement.
Putting these guidelines in writing protects you both should any misunderstandings occur down the road. It also creates helpful boundaries that give your manager clarity on their role.
Granting Account Access
When ready to provide access, only grant permissions your manager truly requires. Start small, expanding as needed. Here are common options:
Profile Viewing
This simply lets a manager view your profile in full, along with section analytics. Useful for an initial audit before making improvements.
Profile Editing
For actively maintaining your profile this allows managers to add, edit or remove any content. Be selective about which sections they can manage based on your agreement.
Post Visibility
Want them managing your posts and articles? This enables access to publish as you and view/delete existing posts.
Account Access
This provides the full suite of permissions, including managing messages, notifications, contacts and all account settings. Only provide this if required.
Analytics Access
Managers can benefit from seeing your LinkedIn analytics for guidance optimizing your presence. Give access if useful.
Best Practices for Access Management
When providing others account access, it’s wise to take steps ensuring you remain in control. Follow these best practices:
- Have a clear user agreement as mentioned covering permissions and boundaries.
- Only provide necessary access. Don’t give full account access if they only need to update your profile.
- Leverage LinkedIn tools like expiration dates for permissions. Don’t make access indefinite.
- Use roles if assigning access to multiple managers to limit permissions.
- Check notification settings so you see all account activity updates.
- Monitor activity regularly to ensure compliance with agreement.
- Change your password afterwards so it’s only known to you.
- Revoke access immediately if anything looks suspicious or improper.
Following these steps and communicating with your manager ensures you stay protected.
Providing Access Through LinkedIn Business Services
LinkedIn offers advanced business services for companies wanting to manage multiple LinkedIn accounts and pages. This gives managers access through:
- LinkedIn Elevate – management platform with collaboration tools.
- LinkedIn Campaign Manager – create and deploy LinkedIn ad campaigns.
- LinkedIn Matched Audiences – target based on company LinkedIn data.
- LinkedIn Profile Organizer – organize profile data from company employees.
These provide powerful options but require LinkedIn’s business packages which can get quite expensive. Great for larger companies, overkill for solopreneurs and small teams.
Using a Social Media Management Platform
Social media management tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer also empower managers by providing access to multiple LinkedIn accounts from one dashboard. Useful capabilities include:
- Posting updates across many profiles all at once.
- Scheduling future content for automated publishing.
- Monitoring notifications and messages from one interface.
- Generating analytics reports on profile performance.
- Collaborating with team members also using the platform.
These platforms make it much easier to manage multiple LinkedIn profiles efficiently. They provide access through one dashboard while still allowing account owners to retain control. Most offer free plans for individuals and freelancers as well as advanced functionality on paid plans.
Maintaining Involvement and Visibility
While providing your manager access enables them to take LinkedIn management off your plate, it’s still wise to stay involved in your presence there. Consider these tips:
- Review profile changes and posts made on your behalf to ensure proper tone and messaging.
- Jump into LinkedIn conversations when appropriate to keep relationships authentic.
- Monitor notifications and messages to retain visibility on account activity.
- Communicate with your manager regularly to align on strategy.
- Periodically change account login details and review settings.
Granting access doesn’t mean fully relinquishing control. Stay engaged and your manager can keep your LinkedIn presence optimized without going rogue.
Revoking Access
Should the need arise, cancel a manager’s LinkedIn access right away through:
- Visit Settings & Privacy > Account Management > Revoke Access
- Remove individual manager permissions
- Delete any roles you created with related permissions
- Change your account password so they can’t log in
- Remove any integrations like Hootsuite that provide access
Don’t delay on revocation if necessary. This ensures no unwanted changes or activity.
Conclusion
Allowing a business manager access to your LinkedIn account can transform your professional brand and presence. Their expertise and bandwidth can optimize your profile and activity better than tackling it alone.
With the right agreement, limits, and ongoing communication, providing access enables managers to help elevate your LinkedIn presence while keeping the integrity of your account. It’s a win-win allowing them to manage successfully on your behalf.
Just be sure to start small, maintain visibility, and revoke permissions the moment anything looks questionable. Your profile should reap the benefits of management without compromise or risk.
Benefits of Giving Access | Risks of Giving Access |
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Key Takeaways
- Create a user agreement covering specific access permissions.
- Only provide necessary access like profile vs. full account access.
- Leverage tools like expiration dates for access grants.
- Monitor account activity regularly.
- Revoke access immediately if anything looks suspicious.
Giving your business manager access to your LinkedIn allows them to manage your professional presence so you can focus on higher value work. With proper precautions and communication, it can elevate your brand and unlock more opportunities.